The race to dominate social media in the next generation is more pitched than ever before – especially with the recent rise of AI.
You might recall a story we brought you a while ago about Snap adding an AI element to its list of features. Initially, it was only for those with a subscription, but now the AI chatbot has rolled out to everyone on Snap.
And it looks like a prescient decision on that company’s part now that Instagram is touting the advent of its version of the same thing.
According to TechCrunch, the ability to craft your own “AI friend” on Instagram will include everything from various dispositions in terms of mood and personality to gender. Envisioned as a way for users to receive, “answer[s] [to] questions, talk through any challenges, brainstorm ideas and much more.”
There is even an avatar customization option for users to explore.
Of course, given that all of this is in development and ostensibly not public, TechCrunch reports that they haven’t received any official comment from Meta as of yet although the release of a similar feature on competitor Snap’s platform, as mentioned earlier, is probably more than enough reason to believe that Instagram is trying out something similar.
As with our coverage of generative AI that manipulates media, this, too, comes with a myriad of ethical concerns. Chief among those concerns is the ability of an AI chatbot to fool people into thinking it is a live person or delivering erroneous or even harmful responses and output. TechCrunch goes on to outline that, because of this basic element, the first step towards transparency is clear identification of AI in user interactions.
Any thoughts you might have on AI chatbots, generative editing, and so on are welcome in the comments.
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